Classical realization of dispersion-canceled, artifact-free, and background-free optical coherence tomography

Quantum-optical coherence tomography (Q-OCT) provides a dispersion-canceled axial-imaging method, but its practical use is limited by the weakness of the light source and by artifacts in the images. A recent study using chirped-pulse interferometry (CPI) has demonstrated dispersion-canceled and arti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics express 2016-04, Vol.24 (8), p.8280-8289
Main Authors: Ogawa, Kazuhisa, Kitano, Masao
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Quantum-optical coherence tomography (Q-OCT) provides a dispersion-canceled axial-imaging method, but its practical use is limited by the weakness of the light source and by artifacts in the images. A recent study using chirped-pulse interferometry (CPI) has demonstrated dispersion-canceled and artifact-free OCT with a classical system; however, unwanted background signals still remain after removing the artifacts. Here, we propose a classical optical method that realizes dispersion-canceled, artifact-free, and background-free OCT. We employ a time-reversed system for Q-OCT with transform-limited input laser pulses to achieve dispersion-canceled OCT with a classical system. We have also introduced a subtraction method to remove artifacts and background signals. With these methods, we experimentally demonstrated dispersion-canceled, artifact-free, and background-free axial imaging of a coverglass and cross-sectional imaging of the surface of a coin.
ISSN:1094-4087
1094-4087
DOI:10.1364/oe.24.008280